Olivia grew very red, and in some confusion tried to explain away this too obvious conclusion. But Mr. Brander stopped her.
“You are quite, quite right,” he said, kindly. “You would be blind if you couldn’t see it. My sister-in-law saw it, twelve years ago, when she was wise enough to reject me and to take my brother.”
“There, now you see why Mrs. Meridith Brander is destitute of feeling, imagination, and passion, and resplendent only in the less lovable qualities,” he went on mocking at himself good-humoredly. “If she had only chosen me, I should have a very different tale to tell, you may be sure.”
Olivia was silent. The strange contrast between the two brothers filled her with pity for the one who had been kind to her, and with a sort of unreasonable antagonism towards the unknown one to whom fortune had been so much more generous.
“It seems very hard on you,” she said, glancing at him rather shyly.
But even as she spoke a violent change came over his face which chilled and repelled her, and brought back to her mind with sudden and startling vividness the vague warning of the old woman. A flush of fierce and vindictive anger, a short, sharp struggle with himself, and then Mr. Brander was subdued and kind and courteous as ever. But this peep at the nature underneath had made an impression upon Olivia which she could not readily forget; it destroyed the ease she had felt with him, and woke a distrust which his instant return to his old kindly manner failed to remove.
“It is very good of you to think so,” he said, with a courteous smile. “At one time I admit it seemed hard to me too. But I’ve been forced to confess long ago that I could not have occupied the position he fills either with credit to myself or satisfaction to anybody else. While as for poor Evelyn, if she had had the misfortune to take me with my bad temper and my inevitable hatred of order, instead of being still handsome, amiable, and young, she would be a haggard old woman.”
Remembering, as she did, the bitterness which he had previously shown in speaking of his sister-in-law, and the fierce animosity which had blazed out of his black eyes a moment ago in recalling the contrast between his brother and himself, Olivia could not help feeling that there was a little hypocrisy in this ultra-modest speech, and she made some civil answer in a tone which showed constraint in comparison with her previous warm-hearted and simple frankness. Mr. Brander looked scrutinizingly at her face, and reading the change in its expression, hastened to open another and less dangerous subject.
“And here I have been gossiping about my own idle affairs all this time, without once asking you what you came to see me about, and what I can do for you.”
“I brought a letter of introduction to Mrs. Brander,” said Olivia producing it. “The wife of one of the curates at Streatham, where I live, or at least where I have been living,” she added, correcting herself, “knew Mrs. Brander some years ago. And she thought, as I was coming here all by myself, it would be pleasanter for me to know some one.”